Tickets for this FREE community event are now available at the Bear Tooth Box Office only. This presentation is brought to you by Spenard Second Saturday and hosted at the Bear Tooth Theatrepub. Saturday November 11th @ 11:30am. Presentation followed by a Q&A with the presenter.

What’s the Topic:

For a generation of Anchorage residents, a Spenard Divorce was a familiar piece of local folklore, the joking idea that women could kill their spouses and escape an inconvenient marriage with little to no legal consequences. The reality was far darker, a cluster of sensational crimes normalized by humor. This presentation covers the origin and evolution of Spenard Divorces, with additional neighborhood history, both lighthearted and serious.

Who’s the Historian:

David Reamer is an academic and public scholar interested in the intersections of social justice, history, and community construction. David is the co-author, with Dr. Ian Hartmann, of the book Black Lives in Alaska: An African American History of the Far Northwest, published last year by University of Washington Press. His other publications include journal and magazine articles on topics ranging from Jewish Alaska history to baseball to waffles, and his “Histories of Anchorage” series appears weekly in the Anchorage Daily News. Current research topics include the presentation of history on social media and early LGBT+ history in Alaska. Find him on Twitternstagram, Mastodon, and Threads at @ANC_Historian.